


Bequests & Legacies

by apiphile



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: BDSM, Burning, CBT, Caning, Cutting, F/M, I am firmly in the camp of Bond/M and will not be moved, I say "camp" I think there's about two of us, I wrote all of this on public transport so it's pretty dire, al-fresco shagging, background Tanner/Q if you squint, big moral lesson tacked on in a hurry, but you know no one reads fic for the plot, could not care less, enjoy your shit porn, hard-won orgasms, oh i guess there are some plot elements in here, probably riddled with typos, sigh, the restaurant in this is no longer in that location but i really like is o, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:15:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eve receives an unusual inheritance, Bond is able to indulge his fetishes again. This is kind of a companion piece to The Long Haul even though they don't really intersect very much plot-wise.</p><p>EDIT: this fic lead to an invitation to solicit for inclusion in an anthology of ORIGINAL BDSM fiction, which I would *love* to recommend to you by name as it's a great anthology and a great publisher, but unfortunately Ao3 ToS says I can't mention that anywhere on the archive, so I guess you will never, ever get to read any more femmedom from me! Sorry. Hope you enjoyed it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bequests & Legacies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fahye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fahye/gifts), [abbichicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/gifts), [LizaPod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizaPod/gifts), [jar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jar/gifts).



This is a story of a man who had two great loves, who both died, and how he came to be happy without love, but with care.

* * *

His name was –

His name was his calling card. It was a threat. Other men in his profession professionally hid behind a very professional number. The double zero which set them effortlessly apart from other hired killers and legal thugs: the link to queen and country.

When they said _Queen_ , he’d always thought, _they really meant **her**_.

* * *

When a man has two great loves, Bond thought, people typically expect them to be consecutive, not concurrent; if concurrent, they do not expect them to be unconflicting. People who lived those kinds of lives expected that: no one expected anything _typical_ of a double-O.

* * *

“Sorry,” said Bill Tanner. It was his own acknowledgement that they’d shared an affliction: Bond doubted they were alone in it, either. There was Tom, for one thing.

Bond had met Tom at a formal dinner, because there had been a time when people thought he was fit for those. M hadn’t, and had said so repeatedly, but prevailing Whitehall opinion had been against her, as it so often was. Their department was required to put on a show of civility to explain where all the money went.

Bond had been very uncivil and taken a male escort called Colin as his date, because he had never been even a little above being petty. M had brought her husband.

He was a congenial man who looked as if he’d have been happier in a garden with a trowel and a day-dream, who had a gentle handshake and out of control white eyebrows which looked like the graveyard of a thousand albino spiders. 

“So,” he’d said, clasping Bond’s hand, “You’re the chap who keeps borrowing my wife at all the odd hours of the day,” and he’d smiled as if someone had just presented him with third place at a flower show he’d never expected to win.

Afterward, Bond thought Tom’s tone was unduly knowing.

“Of course he _knows_ ,” M had snapped. “He’s not bloody stupid.”

Bond had expressed the opinion, while Colin tried to fill every empty space in his body with free champagne, that he doubted anyone would be so sanguine and unflinching about their wife’s extramarital exercises. Especially ones which involved the use of restraints.

She had given him the same exasperated look she always did. “Your long experience of committed romantic relationships, of course, has prepared you for this infallible insight.” Her expression was decidedly vinegary.

He’d said: “But—“

“He knows you’re no threat to his position,” she’d said briskly, “and he knows necessity makes for strange practices. What is it to Tom if I am occasionally required to thrash a field agent to make him behave the way I want him to?”

Bond had taken it with equanimity and large glass of scotch. She had after all stopped short of saying ‘and I don’t love you’, but the meaning had never been in doubt. His affection, at least of that variety, was one-sided and that, he’d though, was comfortable. Safe, even. Painful. 

When he remembered at all, he felt sorry for Tanner – he was a softer man, and knowing he was in a contest that even Bond had lost must sting.

Vesper was a different matter.

He loved her with the caustic fervour of a teenager and the responsible care of a doting father. She fascinated him, but her fragility and tenderness left him with a red raw gap that cried out to be tended to. 

Between the two of them, he thought, they’d constructed something that might hold him: Vepser’s requited love, her sadness, the sweetness of a lover who knows she is on borrowed time, who only wants to have an uncomplicated pressure on her heart before it stops beating; and M’s brusque, professional indifference only occasionally betraying an exasperated fondness and a sense of ... proprietary pride. He as her project, a half-wild dog sshe had made into a formidable hunter, and when he wasn’t fucking things up – which Bond acknowledged he did rather often – she was proud of what she had created. Proud of him.

“Such loyalty,” Silva had said.

Playing the game, Bond hadn’t said, _her pride is enough for me_. He hadn’t said, _it would never occur to me for a moment to turn on her._

It was as unthinkable as taking a knife to the face of God. He would had died of the attempt: in his empty cavern of a heart, Bond had irrationally believed that M was the perfect contrast to the long-wounded delicacy of the traitor Vesper. That while Vesper had been fated to die, she – with her loyal dogs and her firm hand – would go on forever, like Diana or Artemis. 

Somewhere inside him the last treasured shred of his humanity had winked out in his arms: the huntress was mortal. She was an old woman, dying in his hands, lighter than he remembered, and then heavier than all the woes of the world. He’d scarcely known he was crying.

* * *

“Sorry,” Bill Tanner had said, after the funeral. He hadn’t tried to deliver the traditional manful gesture of sympathy, the invasive and awkward pat on the shoulder.

Bond acknowledged the layers of sentiment in the word, the howling wasteland of loss behind Tanner’s professional face, with a curt nod. He wondered if he should say anything to Tom, and then Tom was beside him, his face wet and his eyes red.

“I’m glad you were there,” he said. “If anyone could have stopped it, it would have been you.”

“I didn’t,” said Bond.

“Then it was her time,” Tom said, with a croak, fishing for clichés in the depths of his grief. “If you’d like to—“

Bond left before he could make any overture of friendship that might crack the clay casing his injured heart.

* * *

Six weeks after the funeral Bond left his new flat, with its pictureless walls and characterless furniture and the ugly china bulldog on the toilet cistern, and went to the headquarters in Vauxhall. The traffic was atrocious, the weather more so, and with the passion of a boy who had grown up in the isolated, wind-battered Highlands, where such weather was the blustering, pissing norm, Bond wished himself in Tangiers, or Rio, or somewhere else with a civilised climate.

He had always, _always_ hated London.

He waited in the anteroom at Vauxhall, done up to look like the anterooms of Whitehall, with incongruous wood panelling and Chesterfields replacing the open space and glass walls of the rest of the building. Bloody funny sort of thing to have in a secret agency, Bond considered.. Glass walls convinced everyone on a very crude psychological level that transparency was their key function. The head of security must be living in a constant nightmare.

Eve smiled at him from behind a large sage-topped desk with a small silver computer on it. “Hello, Mr Bond.”

“Hello, Miss Moneypenny,” he said, sitting on the edge of her desk.

“I’ve come into an inheritance,” said Eve, reaching into a drawer.

“Does this mean you’re leaving us?” asked Bond, stiffening unconsciously at the movement, already trying to work out if he had time to dodge the shot.

“Oh, it’s not a financial asset, worst luck,” sighed Eve, as if she would for a single moment be satisfied by mere wealth when there were men as powerful as Gareth Mallory to be surreptitiously bossed around. She held up a small white envelope. 

“What have you been left, then?” asked Bond, affecting a fine line between curiosity and indifference. If this was a new way of handing over assignments, it was sloppy, showy, and irritating, and he wanted no part in it.

“You, apparently,” said Eve. She passed him the envelope. It had been opened – as well it might be, for it was addressed to her. In M’s handwriting. “Tom found it in the nightstand and dutifully delivered it.”

Bond opened out the sheet of paper and skimmed it, his throat running dry and tight. It was a bald list of numbers and implements, physical parameters and materials, which in conjunction with M had occupied some of his most private moments. He folded it up, gave it back to Eve, and swallowed carefully, wearing his best poker face.

“In a way it’s rather sweet,” she said, slipping the envelope back into the drawer, with a carelessness that would have surely reduced the more confidentiality-minded administrative staff to apoplexy, “I feel like I’m being handed over the faithful family terrier. Or Paddington. ‘Please take care of this bear’.”

“Look After,” Bond corrected, without thinking. “It was _please look after this bear_.”

“You’re not off to a good start,” Eve chided him. “I won’t tolerate backchat, Mr Bond.” The smile that accompanied this teasing glittered like diamonds uncovered at the bottom of a well. Eve was _not_ comfortably distant from him at all.

“Bond,” said Mallory, opening his own office door. 

Bond stood. As he left, Bill Tanner entered the anteroom through the outer door, and failed to acknowledge him at all.

* * *

Three weeks later he returned from a French hospital and gave as much of a report as he could remember to Mallory, who nodded, and told Tanner to translate it into ‘MP-friendly whitewash’.

On his way out, Bond found Eve taking her coat down from the stand. It had a second coat inside it, and a scarf. He helped her on with each layer, and when he had finished adjusting the her scarf for her, she said, “Better. So, where are we going for dinner?”

“The lady decides,” said Bond, opening the door for her.

“You’re not going to like _that_ ,” said Eve. “Remember, the ‘lady’ is on a secretary’s wage band.”

“I didn’t say the lady _pays_ ,” said Bond, mildly affronted at the idea that he would be so unchivalrous.

“Nevertheless,” said Eve, “the lady does pay. I don’t take tribute in the form of meals, Mr Bond.”

He drove them out of the city at a sedate speed, while Eve made a very unladylike bid to change her tights to trousers in the car.

“You always looked so poised,” he teased.

She gave him a very sharp smile. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to wear six inch heels and teeter about in an evening gown every time I’m seen with you,” said Eve. “I might decide I want to wear jogging bottoms.”

“Mm,” said Bond, with exaggerated distaste.

“I might want _you_ to wear the heels,” Eve added, putting her shoes back on as they swept through the Cotswolds in the bright, frosty night.

“Mm,” said Bond, contemplatively. “I’d like a pair of Louboutins.”

“You’ll take what you’re given,” said Eve.

“I’m good at that.” Bond watched the reflected headlights on the catseyes disappear under the bonnet. He glanced at Eve. “You don’t seem too bothered.”

“At what?”

“Being unceremoniously given someone else’s hand-me-downs.” He took an abrupt turning down a side road.

“I’m used to it,” said Eve, with sudden, blunt honesty. “We didn’t all grow up in a manor house. And besides, looks can be deceiving.”

“Is that so?”

“I feel like I’m stepping into shoes I might not be able to fill,” she said, quietly.

He gave her a long look, and only just reverted his attention to the road in time. “It’s not a mandate,” he said, with more delicacy than he was used to. “You can always refuse.”

The sharp smile came back, a flashlight shone back on the diamonds in the darkness. “What, and turn down the chance to play rough with the big boys?” Eve very deliberately licked her lips. “Don’t patronise me, _James_. I’ll make you pay for it.”

“Yes, dear,” Bond said, patronisingly. He pulled up in the quiet village car park, and made a point of getting out to help Eve up. She accepted his hand with a sardonic inclination of her head, and shivered into her coats.

“So we’ve driven two hours to have dinner in the whitest place in England –“ she began.

“There’s an Indian take-away just there,” he pointed to the far side of the road. 

“I’m sure they’re _very_ comfortable,” said Eve. She drew her scarf about her neck more tightly. “Ashamed to be seen with me?”

“Hugely,” said Bond. They crossed the road. Two down from the take-away, he held the door to an unrelated restaurant open. “I’m afraid I had a more insulting reason for picking this spot.”

“Mm?” Eve let him take her coats, and watched hawkishly as he handed them over to a black-jacketed Adam’s apple with a little teenager wrapped inside it. 

“Well,” said Bond, leaning in to murmur in her ear, “It has a Michelin star, but it’s far enough away from London that if you _insist_ on paying, you can still afford to pay your rent this month.”

“That,” said Eve, as they were led to a table in the tiny restaurant, “is _incredibly_ patronising.”

“Isn’t it?” Bond said with a quick smile. “I’m racking up sins against good manners today.”

Eve looked around her for a minute. “I like it,” she concluded, softening. “It doesn’t have your usual international anonymity and tedious expensive taste. More ‘antique gold’ than ‘this month’s diamond ring’.”

“Was there another envelope?” Bond asked, once the aperitif had made its way to the table.

“None of your business,” Eve said, kicking him under the table. “View this as a choice that was kindly suggested, not an order that’s being executed.” She investigated her amuse-bouche. “It looks like an ice-cream for pixies.”

“It’s horseradish,” Bond offered. “I did have my suspicions about you.”

“ _You_ , on the other hand, are very obvious,” said Eve. She made a face. “That’s _powerful_ horseradish. You more or less walk about with it written on your face.” She finished the savoury ice-cream all the same, with every sign of enjoyment. When she had finished, and gulped wine a little faster than was strictly prim, she said, “I may make some changes.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” said Bond, mildly. “It’s not a discussion.”

Eve frowned minutely. “No,” she said, leaning forwards. “You might not need me to tell you. But I need to.” She pointed her glass at Bond like a walking stick in the hand of a country gentleman showing off his grounds. “Don’t conflate ‘sadist’ with ‘psychopath’, James. You’re not stupid.” 

He made an apologetic motion with his head, but said nothing.

“I have to know you agree to it,” she said, replacing her glass on the table. “Or it won’t happen at all.”

He sat back and smiled at his starter as it was laid before him. “Alright,” said Bond. “What do you want to change?”

“My predecessor,” said Eve in a very businesslike voice, as her start was laid in front of her, “favoured blunt instruments for use on her blunt instrument. Do you have a particular need for them?”

Bond said, “The lady decides,” with what he was sure was a deferential smile.

“The lady,” said Eve,” is going to get pissed off soon if you don’t cooperate a little.”

Bond shrugged. “I can’t choose an alternative unless I know what the alternative _is_.”

Eve said, “You’ve already met the alternative,” and raised her knife very slightly from the tablecloth. She lowered her voice and spoke with a small rasp, “In Macau.” 

“Mm,” said Bond. He took a mouthful of garnish, and under the cover of rearranging the remainder, added, “Instead of, or as well as?” The memory was quite clear, but walled in by death as it was, he could extract no particular feel for it from the numb wash the entire assignment had become.

“As well as,” said Eve. “I’d hate to deprive an old man of his established routine.”

“I shall require my cocoa and slippers afterwards,” said Bond, taking another mouthful of greenery. He screwed up his face as Eve kicked him again. 

“This liver really is good,” said Eve, examining it. “I didn’t realise that people in _this_ country were capable of being so resourceful with innards.”

“Offal,” said Bond.

“Or so pedantic,” she muttered, putting the venison liver in her mouth.

“I suppose that’s another infraction,” Bond murmured.

A waiter swept in and removed the plates. The effect of effortless, chic service was rather blunted by the burble of borderline Gloucestershire/Wiltshire accents around them and the occasional lorry passing on the road directly outside, but on the whole the lack of bright, polished metropolitan insulation made the dinner more memorable than otherwise.

“I’ve often wondered,” Eve said, inspecting a glass of Cornish-grown Shiraz with half of her attention, “outside of the bland opulence of the well-heeled man of your profession, does the lack of personal touches extend to your lonelier moments?”

Bond said very carefully, “I kept the dog.”

She gave him an unexpectedly sad smile. “Good. You’re human after all.”

“I have a painting by Vermeer that I picked myself,” Bond added, suddenly determined to undermine this moment of humanity, “but that was because my accountant told me to invest in a work of art.”

“When was the last time you watched a film?” Eve asked. Another amuse-bouche arrived. It looked incongruously like a Christingle studded with cloves in a strange hybrid with a pomander, but made with a mandarin-sized fruit instead of an orange-sized one. It turned out that even the ‘ribbon’ was edible, and most of it was savoury.

Bond shrugged.

“Read a book?” Eve persisted, removing a clove head from the amouse-bouche.

He counted back. “Eighteen months ago.”

“Do you listen to music,” Eve asked, “on purpose?”

“No.”

She sighed, and picked out another clove. “When I was six I wanted to be an astronaut and I made a spaceship out of next door’s delivery box for their washing machine. Last week I went to an evening art class at CSM – Central Saint Martin’s, I mean – and painted the single worst giraffe the world has ever seen. Even Judith couldn’t find anything nice to say about it and she’s one of those earnest purple-wearing white ladies in their fifties who’ll agree with you if you call the Wu-Tang Clan impassioned poetry, and she just stood there with her mouth open in horror.” Eve paused, and pointed her fork at Bond. “None of that is suave or sexy or at all sophisticated. It’s pretty sad, isn’t it? But I’m not worried about getting everything _wrong_.”

Bond gave her an expectant look, and stoppered his mouth up with the last of the Christingle clove paté.

“You just _exist_ ,” said Eve.

“There was a poet Herself liked a lot,” said Bond, laying down his fork. “Tennyson. I tried some of his but he seemed to live in a world of mythological romantic ideals that had no bearing on reality.” He gave Eve a crooked smile, and said, “I liked Eliot. Before I realised I was eavesdropping on myself.”

“You do know you’re not making sense,” Eve remarked. The main arrived, but she refused to be thrown by a perfectly arranged rabbit made of rabbit, on a grassy hill of samphire. 

“We are the hollow men,” he said, and turned his gaze to the main course while Eve digested the quote.

“You’re being out-evolved,” she said at last, poking some samphire with her fork. “Henry and his nimble fingers. Doesn’t that scare you?”

“That’s why I don’t think about it,” said Bond, avoiding the ‘yes’. “No profit in being afraid of the inevitable. Obsolescence. Death. Henry Symmonds and his tea.”

She laughed, a slightly grim laugh, and said, “Well, this i the most cheerful not-a-date I’ve been on.”

Bond dabbed gravely at his mouth. “I can tap dance, if it would help.”

“Very funny,” said Eve, looking around. “I don’t think there’s room.”

“I’m serious,” said Bond, with a smile that barely cracked his face. “I learned for an assignment. I can dance very _well_.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” said Eve, nibbling on samphire. “I can’t, by the way. Not _one_ word from you. I was always more into target practice.” She said ruefully, “I wanted to be an elven archer for a bit, too.” She stared at another strand of samphire. “What _is_ this stuff? It’s delicious. It tastes like the sea.”

“Samphire,” said Bond. “I think it grows in the fens.”

“Well,” said Eve, “I think we’ve made a fucking mess of ‘getting to know each other’. There’s not really anything to _know_ about you. You just exist in chemistry with other people and then fade away.”

“Ouch.” Bond shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint,” he said, with an edge in his voice.

Her eyes widened. “Oh. You _are_ , too.”

“There was another envelope,” Bond said, his muscles tense. “Did you think the contents were too cruel?”

Eve considered this. She said, “Is it what you need?”

“I don’t _need_ anything outside of the basic requirements for life,” Bond said lightly. He shovelled too much sweet potato mash into his mouth. 

“Oh you are _full_ of shit,” Eve muttered, kicking him again. “Listen. I don’t enjoy telling people the ... the kind of things I’m supposed to say to you ... unless I know it’s for a good reason.”

Bond swallowed his mouthful. “You want me to say that I need it?”

“I _need_ you,” said Eve, evenly, “to be honest with me. Just for a minute. You can hide behind your Savile Row tailoring and your excessively masculine watch again soon.”

“What’s wrong with my watch?” Bond asked, glancing at the Omega.

Eve said, “It’s just armour, like the rest of it.”

“There isn’t anything left to protect,” Bond said, holding her gaze. _Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!_ An empty suit of armour. 

“So you won’t mind taking it off,” said Eve, and without a change her expression, she added in a deeper and more commanding voice, “Now.”

Bond undid the catch, slipped the watch off over his hand, and laid it on the tablecloth between them.

“I don’t want it,” said Eve. She laid her fork on the plate and regarded the watch as if it were a dead mouse.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to remove?” he asked, laying down his own fork in answer.

“Not yet,” said Eve. “But sooner or later, yes.”

When the amuse-bouches preceding desert came, they came to a silent table. Eve turned and bestowed fulsome praise for the main on the waiter, to be relayed to the chef, and made enquiries about samphire that the adolescent could not answer. He promised to ask the chef.

Bond turned to the boy, and without ceremony said, “It’s an unorthodox tip, but I thought you might like this,” while offering him the Omega.

“I’m – I’m not sure I can accept it,” said the boy, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. He was still young enough that his voice arched away into a squeak mid-sentence, and by rights he probably shouldn’t have been working that evening at all.

“It’s yours if you want it,” said Bond, leaving the watch on the edge of the table.

“ _James_ ,” Eve tutted, when the Adam’s apple had departed. “Leave him alone.”

“He sort of reminds one of Q,” said Bond, turning to the final amuse-bouche. It had a foam on it. He disapproved inherently of foams, but it tasted of hazelnuts and bonfires and overall redeemed itself somewhat with the light crumble that underpinned it. 

“Henry would choke you half to death,” Eve said.

“I know.” Bond finished the chestnut glaze at the bottom of the little glass. “It’s rather an exhilarating thought.”

“Tempted?” Eve suggested, making sure her spoon was entirely clean.

“God, no,” Bond said with a look of alarm. “He seems the possessive type. Two rounds with Symmonds and he’d have me locked in a cupboard with his name tattooed on my arse. No confidence, that one.”

“Mm,” said Eve, thoughtfully. “Henry needs a scraggy Shetland pony, not a battle-hardened thoroughbred.”

“You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not _that_ interested in the requirements of Henry Symmonds and his anorak-wearing sex life, charming though his complete lack of charm is,” Bond said. 

The waiter returned with a kind of adventure playground for berries for him and a bowl of pristine vanilla ice-cream for her, which she immediately abused with a small jug of red coulis. The gory result left Bond with a raised eyebrow and a premonition. 

“Am I supposed to draw an inference from this?” he asked, as Eve attacked her desert with gusto.

“If you like.”

“I’m beginning to feel somewhat nervous,” said Bond, taking a mouthful of freeze-dried hedgerow fruits and candied herbs.

“I’d say ‘good’,” said Eve, pausing in mid-carnage, “but you are clearly lying.”

“I said I was nervous,” said Bond, chasing a currant around what looked like unadulterated liquorice root, apparently intended as a palate-cleanser after the main dessert, “I said nothing about not enjoying the sensation.”

“Is that a fact?” Eve spooned the last of her violent-looking dessert into her mouth with wide eyes. “Anything I should be careful of?”

“Cigarettes,” said Bond, with a discrete smile, “or at least, matches. Very dangerous.”

“And decisions,” said Eve, reaching for her glass with raised, questioning eyebrows.

“Now those,” said Bond, “I really do want to avoid.”

“Are we about to squabble over the bill?” Eve asked, stretching out in her seat until her foot pushed between Bond’s. 

“Not until after coffee.”

In the end, and after some argument, the restaurant owners interceded and suggested that they split the bill. Bond rather mendaciously added a 100% tip and insisted on pushing the Omega on the rattled waiter, leaving a confused but quite pleased and financially better-off staff in their wake as he held open the door.

“Hell’s _tits_ ,” Eve exclaimed as the gust of winter air caught her in the doorway. “Whoops.”

The car steamed up the second they climbed inside.

“Know any good hotels around here?” Eve asked, as Bond fiddled with the heaters, trying to balance warmth against visibility. “God, it’s minus three, no wonder it’s so awful out there.”

“The nearest large town is Swindon,” said Bond.

“So that’s a no,” Eve grumbled.

“London isn’t far,” said Bond.

“If you drive into the back of a lorry,” Eve said, deliberately pulling her seatbelt into place, “I will make your afterlife unbearable.”

“Who says we’re going to the same place?” Bond said, testing the engine gently. “You’re a fine, upstanding woman and I’ve killed almost as many people as I’ve slept with.”

“Well, when you put it like that—“ Eve reached out and flicked him in the top of the ear. “Don’t drive us into the back of a lorry, I paid for that CSM course in advance and I swear to God I will paint a convincing giraffe by spring if it kills me.”

“You could have picked something easier,” Bond pointed out. “Like a jellyfish—Ow!”

Eve laughed at his expression, and turned on the radio.

A little later, Bond said, “I know this one.”

“That’s because it’s Billie Holiday,” said Eve, staring out of the window at some distant lights, with her chin on her hand.

“As if that was inevitable.”

“Most civilised adults recognise Billie Holiday,” said Eve.

Bond snorted. “Q’s predecessor liked Girls Aloud.”

She jerked away from the window and stared at him. “He was eighty-something!”

Bond shrugged. “It made him feel young.”

“What makes you feel young?” Bond gunned the engine. “Youth’s horrendous.”

Eve drew up her other foot. “Vital and energetic?”

“You’re thinking of coffee.” Bond eased down on the accelerator until the Wiltshire hedges gave way to Berkshire ones. Without turning his head, he said, “You could paint _me_.”

“I’m pretty sure I couldn’t,” said Eve. “I couldn’t do trees, even.”

“You can’t be any worse than the real thing.”

“For a rich man, that was really cheap.” She arched her back, and dropped her head over the head rest. “I don’t want to go back to yours. And I have flatmates.”

“Is this cold feet?” Bond asked, not sure if he felt anything about that at all.

“It’s a request for al-fresco shagging,” said Eve, cracking her knuckles. “Or something like it.”

“It’s minus ... four, around here,” Bond reminded her, pointing at the gently glowing temperature display with his pinky. “I had no idea you were into hypothermia.”

“I’ll be wearing two coats,” said Eve. “You’re the one getting your skin out in the frost.”

“Okay,” said Bond, pulling off the road and into an empty field. He drove on over the frozen mud until he reached a metal five-bar gate. He got out, opened the gate, drove through, and closed the gate. “What exactly is happening?”

Eve pulled a pair of woollen gloves out of her coat pocket. “A test.”

The idea steeled him the way desperation or an unavoidable order might. He hopped back out of the car and stood under an ice-ringed moon, among grey grass stalks that crunched under his shoes, and said, “Ready when you are.”

Eve, clad in two coats, a scarf, gloves, and the silliest woollen bobble hat Bond had ever seen on an adult woman, pointed at him with a Zippo lighter. “Shirt off.”

This necessitated taking off a jacket and waistcoat, too – all three items Bond draped with some small regret on the bonnet of the car. 

“On your knees,” said Eve, in a cloud of visible breath, while Bond began to shiver.

“Please tell me you’re not going to burn my clothes,” he said, only half-joking.

“They’re expensive,” said Eve, drawing nearer. “ _You_ are cheap.” She put the Zippo to his chest, just above the dent of his sternum. “I’d say something about incinerating trash, but cheap and shoddy one liners are really more your forte, aren’t they?”

He nodded, unable to stop a smile.

She back-handed him with the lighter so hard that his vision blurred. 

“Don’t fucking laugh at me,” Eve said, her voice steady.

“Sorry, Ma’am,” he said. It all came back so easily. He let his head drop, put his hands behind his back, and treasured the sting of heat in his cheekbones while his body began to convulse with the cold. 

“That’s going to leave a bruise,” said Eve, with satisfaction. Bond didn’t think it would – he was harder to bruise than was really prudent – but he reasoned that this was a bad time to distract her. 

Eve reluctantly pulled off a glove and stuffed it into the wristband of the other. She put the gloved hand on his shoulder, steadying herself, and took a breath, Zippo in her naked hand.

“Don’t have any cuffs,” she lamented, suddenly.

“It’s alright,” said Bond, his teeth chattering. “I can do as I’m told.”

“ _Can_ you?” Eve asked, apparently amused. She flicked the Zippo into life, and brought the towering flame closer to his sternum.

The heat of it made him sweat – a strange experience when the rest of him was so cold. He recalled all too clearly the last time he’d felt this collision of fire and frost, and flinched in spite of himself: the burning house, the frozen fields, the icy lake, the end of an era.

“It’s okay,” said Eve, more softly than he’d ever wanted anyone to speak to him, “You’ll survive.”

He knotted his fingers around each other behind his back, felt the beginnings of soreness in his cold knees, and concentrated on her hand as his skin began to blister.

“I won’t stop,” said Eve, “until you ask me. But when you ask me, I’ll stop immediately.”

He looked up in time to see her smiling a kind of relaxed, relieved smile. It occurred to him again that she didn’t see this as a duty. She enjoyed it.

The sharp pain of burning skin made him jerk back involuntarily, but he leaned forwards into it again, frustrated with himself. Eve removed the lighter, tucked it into her glove. She pressed her bare hand over the burn, and Bond hissed.

“Does it hurt?”

“Of course it fucking hurts.”

“How much do I have to hurt you before you show it?” Eve complained.

“A lot more than that.”

“Really.” Her eyes glinted in the razor-edged moonlight. He thought of her shaving him in Macau, the deft, smooth, controlled strokes – how close she had come, how easy it would have been to slip. She seized him by the hair, and jerked his head back until his eyes watered: easier in this cold. “Put your face by your knees.”

She released him, and he bent to comply, his back bared to the moon and to her whims.

“Now you’re in the mud, where you belong.”

The shiver that rippled over him was not entirely the doing of the air which turned his breath into clouds.

Eve took a couple of steps back.

A moment later he was doubled over in pain, trying to hold his place after a vicious kick in the flank. She hadn’t pulled her blow, either: it was the kind of punt that would have sent a football out of the stadium, the kind drunk, angry men used on fallen adversaries.

“Tha---“ he began. She kicked him again, and knocked the wind out of him.

“There’s no point in pretending to be brave and stoic, you fucking shit,” she said – there was a faint, whispering undertone of a question in her voice, _am I doing this right_ \- “The only reason you’re not crying right now is because you aren’t even a _person_. You’re just a _thing_.”

She dealt him a third kick which fell somewhere between the first and second’s landing places and made him feel abruptly very sick.

“Thank you,” he wheezed.

“Shut up,” Eve said, pushing his side with the heel of her foot.

It was too much. He retched, and without much warning, brought up a mouthful of Michelin-starred vomit directly in front of his own face, narrowly missing his trousers. 

“ _Shit_ ,” said Eve, no longer the tower of untouchable judgement and mockery. She lunged to help him up, but he waved her away weakly. 

“I’m—“ he brought up a little more. “It’s fi---“

“Fuck, I’m an idiot,” said Eve, patting him awkwardly on the heaving shoulder. “Right after _dinner_.”

“It’s oka—“ Bond’s stomach strove to prove him wrong, but at last the heaves subsided, and he rolled onto his side, away from the half-digested remains of what _had_ been a very good meal.

Eve squatted beside him, and pulled his head onto her knees. “Sorry.”

“No need,” he said, with a weak laugh. “You were doing well.”

She laughed. “Of course you knew it was _me_ being tested. Of course you bloody did.”

“You passed,” he said, as she stroked his hair, apparently oblivious to the smell of vomit.

Eve snorted. “Let’s try again somewhere less _stupid_ before you decide that.”

* * *

In theory there was no reason for Bond to be in Geneva. In practice, Mallory wanted him close by in case of any _developments_ : things were looking sticky, of late, and the trouble of finding and briefing Bond at short notice was not something he was prepared to allow for now. In further practice, Eve had come, and Geneva hotels were noted for their discretion.

“Luckily,” Eve said, closing the door, “Mallory has some old-fashioned ideas of propriety, so I get a room to myself.” She closed the curtains against the encroaching night. “Unluckily, Tanner and Mallory have the room next door. So try to yell quietly.”

“I don’t _have_ to yell,” said Bond, removing his cufflinks.

“Yes you do,” said Eve, taking them out of his hand and dropping them without ceremony onto the nightstand. “Don’t take the tie off.”

“What about the shirt?” Bond asked, pausing in mid-button.

“Leave it. The jacket is the only thing that matters, since you’ve been slobbing around with no waistcoat.” Eve removed her shoes and threw them down the side of her bed. “Oh, I brought you a present. It’s in the en suite.”

Bond wandered into the en suite, kicking off his shoes with a certain mutinous glee as he did. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but alongside the toothbrush in a tasteless chrome holder there was also a medical scalpel, plain and unobtrusive. The camouflage was somewhat spoiled by a champagne-coloured ribbon tied in an aggressive bow around the handle.

Bond picked it up between his thumb and middle finger and carried it into the bathroom like an elderly maiden aunt with a pair of discovered filthy foreign underpants.

“Yellow’s not my colour,” he said, passing her the implement handle-first.

“It’s mine,” she said, throwing the ribbon over her shoulder. “Third place.”

“Mm?” said Bond, watching the blade. It was tiny, but it was sharp. Deaths had been meted out with smaller weapons than this.

“Third child in my family,” said Eve, weighing the scalpel. “Also, Eve was Adam’s third choice of wife. After Lilith, and the other one.”

“Mm,” said Bond, ignoring the loud implications. She looked cool and predatory tonight, none of the uncertain laughter of their Cotswolds dinner date, none of the tentative friendliness. This, in a well-heated hotel room identical to a hundred others, was a comfortable coolness. He felt his pulse rise in anticipation.

“On your knees, then,” said Eve.

He did as he was told. She slipped the noose of his tie off over his head, and tightened the Ediety knot around his wrists, over his shirt. She unbuttoned him slowly, scalpel in hand, and twitched back the cotton so forcefully he was afraid it would tear. 

Eve knotted the shirt over his tie, losing Bond's hands in a tangle of cloth. She clamped the scalpel handle between her teeth, winked, and reached for his trouser fly.

Bond said, "No cuffs this time, either?"

Eve raised her eyebrow, and with help from Bond's hips, debagged him to the knee before pushing back down onto his trousers. She looked a like a pirate, the scalpel clasped in her jaws and a lop-sided smile that spelled trouble. Meanwhile, Bond, naked from the elbows to the knees, tangled in clothing and slumped in the middle of the carpet, felt absurd and exposed. Somehow all the more vulnerable for not being entirely undressed: a naked man has at least the dignity of being as nature made him.

She took the scalpel from her mouth and with the other hand yanked his head back by the hair. Eve pulled until his throat was bent out of shape and his eyes stung, and she rested the very tip of the scalpel very gently against the underside of his chin. "Last chance to change your mind, Mr Bond."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Ma'am," said Bond. It came easily, but even to him it smacked of pointless bravado.

She ran the point of the scalpel down over his Adam's apple, so lightly that it tickled him. "You are a one-trick pony, aren't you, James?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"All swagger and no substance," she said, dipping the point a little deeper as it passed below his clavicles. "A sad, hollow excuse for a man. We could build you in a lab."

Bond said, “Yes, Ma’am,” and barely twitched when the scalpel scored the flesh just above the slight swelling of pectoral muscle.

“A vat-grown Bond might do as it was told,” Eve sighed, and sliced, shallowly, a matching cut on his left. “He might _learn_ from his mistakes. He might not make so many. He wouldn’t be a useless, smug dinosaur, staggering about in search of the _grave_.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Bond.

He could see in her eyes, when she took the scalpel across from the rim of one nipple to the other, a shocking red line the width of cotton thread, that she was remembering exact phrases. The contents of the letter he had not been permitted to read, though he knew the words by heart now anyway.

When she opened her mouth her found he was almost willing her to say it, like the spectator of a well-worn play urging an actor to their favourite lines of the soliloquy. 

“No one loves you,” she said, and dug the blade in where flesh would still save his organs from perforation. “No one has ever loved you, and no one ever will.”

He nodded gingerly. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You are nothing.”

Blood broke free from his upper chest and ran in a sad, weak little dribble down over his sternum, like light rain on a windowpane, or tears on the face of a distressed but distracted child.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“You are worthless, cumbersome waste,” said Eve, jerking is head to one side. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Bond said.

She released his hair and dropped the scalpel to the floor. “Look at me.”

Her poise was scuffed, her breaths a little uneven. Bond met her eyes, her dilated pupils, and said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

He knew the blow was coming, but he didn’t brace himself. It felt as if someone had struck a gong in his brain; she had struck with the heel of her hand, trained to it. He felt heat in his cheek, an illusory looseness in his teeth, a tightness in his throat.

“Look at me,” she repeated. He mouth open to breathe. Hair imperfect. She drew back her hand again, and he tensed without meaning to.

The second blow rattled his brain so hard that it knocked stars into his vision and a response from his cock: it completed its slow journey to ‘hard’, and he winced.

“Don’t flinch,” said Eve, seizing his hair again to pull his head back. “Don’t pretend to have feelings.”

A frisson moved through him.

She looked down, and laughed more throatily than was her custom. “I see. Aren’t _you_ a sick fuck, Mr Bond?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Keeping her hand in his hair, with excellent balance, Eve stooped and retrieved the scalpel. The blood drying on his chest tickled: Eve squatted, pulling Bond’s head forward and leaving him in something close to a stress position. Bond’s vision was largely filled by the folds of two bend bodies, and his own cock, still standing to attention.

Eve said, “Look at you. More animal than man.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Bond, with difficulty.

She pressed the scalpel to the outside of his tensed thigh. The twitch of his own muscle opened a fine, shallow cut, and the sense of relieved tense echoed through him like a gunshot in a cathedral.

“Tell me you’re nothing,” Eve commanded. She held his chin, the scalpel extending into the distance at a frankly worrying right angle. “Tell me how worthless you are.”

“Entirely worthless, Ma’am,” said Bond. She kissed him, very gently, and he felt another shiver through the fibres of his body, stretched and straining as his mind filled up with a cool and pleasant darkness.

Eve squeezed his cheeks. “Again.”

“Entirely worthless, Ma’am.”

“You’re not special at all, are you, Bond?”

“No, Ma’am,” he agreed. The cool darkness spread into his limbs, making them heavy and comfortable.

“Good,” said Eve. She reached down to cup his cock in the palm of her hand. The scalpel pointed out into the open air: Bond let the proximity of accidental death register in his mind, and revelled in it again.

* * *

It was a Thursday when she finally succeeded in getting the school cane out of storage without having to argue with anyone about why it was being removed. Eve being Eve, she did nothing very surreptitious or grandiose about it, but waited until he was alone in Mallory’s anteroom and said, “There’s something for you in the umbrella stand.”

He picked it up, bent it, and felt his heart race. It was not any old replica of a school cane: it was a very specific cane, with a very specific pattern of fraying at the end, with very specific patches worn smooth by a very specific grip.

“Continuity,” said Eve. Once again, there was a faint note of anxiety in her voice.

Bond said, almost dreamily, “A boy’s best friend is the promise that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.”

“That’s how she put it,” Eve agreed.

Tomorrow never _was_ the same as yesterday. It would have driven him mad.

Bond returned the cane to the umbrella stand. “Tonight, the Dorchester, at nine.”

Eve gave him a deliberately demure smile.

“Let’s assume,” said Bond, “that this is an entirely mercenary proposal – let me buy you dinner.”

“In return for what?” she asked, more than a little acidic. “I’m not doing _you_ a favour.”

He quirked an eyebrow.

“Anyway,” said Eve, turning back to her computer. “I’m on a raw food diet.”

He didn’t believe this for a second, but he took the hint, and left her in peace.

Out of generalised spite, he stopped in Chancery Lane that afternoon, and bought a pair of very modern and very stark diamond fall earrings. 

“Put ‘for services rendered’ on the box,” he told the coiffed and impeccable woman who took his credit card. He threw in a smile which had no reference to anything.

“That’s a bit formal,” she said, doubtfully complying.

“She’s being promoted,” he lied.

At eight fifty-five he planted himself in the lobby of the Dorchester as if he’d been there all evening. At nine fifteen, Eve came out of one of the lifts and punched him in the bicep. 

He thought his own spite had been unparalleled, but she’d far exceeded it: dressed in pink velour and frosted baby pink lip gloss and a pair of disgusting sunglasses, she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek immediately after the punch, and said, “Where’s my _present?_ ” loudly enough for the whole of Mayfair to hear.

“Who told you?” he murmured, taking the box from his pocket.

“Tanner,” she said sweetly, before squawking in the same loud and grating voice as before, “Oh _James_! It’s so anonymous and expensive! I love it!”

The receptionist appeared to be trying very hard not to laugh.

“You’re hideous,” said Bond with a fixed grin.

“You’re a _dick_ ,” she said, holding his arm too tightly. “Don’t buy me shit.”

“A little guidance,” Bond muttered, leading her to the lifts, “wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Here’s some fucking guidance,” said Eve more loudly as the lift doors closed behind them, leaving them in temporary privacy. “Don’t buy me presents. I’m not your girlfriend and I am not your prostitute.” She opened the box and made a face at Chancery Lane’s finest and most modern diamond earrings. “And I am _definitely_ not wearing these.”

Bond felt the pressure of her fingertips on his arm like a series of vices. He said: “You don’t really dress like that.”  
Eve snorted. “They’re Marion’s.” She gave no indication of who Marion was or why he should know. “She wore them for a play last summer – she was meant to be Paris Hilton.” She gave him the jewellery box back. “Give them to someone who actually _needs_ to be bought,” Eve said, closing his fingers over the box, and her own over his.

Disconcerted for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on, Bond followed her out of the lift and into the hotel room that had been booked under his name.

The door swung shut behind him. There was a simple school-room chair sitting in the middle of the carpet. It was small and wooden, the old sort, and as he drew nearer he could see it had on it the detritus of real use: scratches in the varnish. _P Cottage was ere. Jonah is gay. LM 4 JV._ Ghosts of innocence scraped through cheap wood in surface wounds, filled in with biro. 

When he looked to Eve she was flexing the cane in her hands. “Take off everything,” she said, gesturing to him with the frayed tip. “And fold it up over there.” She waved the cane at the bed, and added in a less imperious voice, “I could get used to this.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” said Bond, unbuttoning his shirt. “I doubt Mallory takes orders very well.”

“No backchat, thank you,” said Eve briskly. She tapped the cane on her thigh, a sound deadened by the hideous velour of her awful borrowed clothes: it still penetrated his skull like a gimlet and left his nerves twanging pleasantly.

He folded his shirt and laid it on the mattress, memories of school chattering under his skin. The movements of his hands were drilled, instinctive. _Bond. Stand up straight_. He removed his shoes. His socks. His trousers. Without hesitation, his underpants. When the pile was square enough to have pleased his old masters, he stepped away from it and stood at ease, naked as a newborn and blank as a freshly-washed slate.

Eve tapped her thigh again. “Kneel on that char.”

Bond did so.

“Brace your hands on the back,” said Eve. She produced a pair of chain-link handcuffs – not military-issue, or police – and quite deftly locked him to the chair. When she had, she reached down and, without any undertone, sexual or otherwise, rearranged his balls.

“Mm,” said Bond, without any particular inflection.

“Shut up,” Eve said, stepping back.

His palms began to sweat. He heard the cane flex, heard the practice swing which was surely for psychological effect alone – he found it hard to believe she hadn’t practiced, again and again, alone in this room, already.

Bond swallowed his breath and tensed his thighs.

The cane whistled through the air. The frayed tip made high-velocity impact on the skin of his scrotum.

Bond roared in unexpected agony, and immediately broke into a broad and entirely unfaked grin.

“Good lad,” Eve all-but-purred, forgetting herself. “Well done.”

She took another crack at him, and this time he only whimpered, biting the inside of his mouth. The next strike was harder, stronger, and accompanied by commentary on his personality which was neither flattering nor ladylike.

Bond breathed through his mouth.

She hit him again, hard enough that he was sure he could _hear_ blood vessels bursting in his balls; Bond blurted an untamed sound and readjusted his grip with wet, slippery hands.

“A sad, empty waste of a man,” Eve intoned, gleefully taking a swipe which missed his balls but kissed the tender skin of his thighs just below the arse and made him twitch unexpectedly. “An empty shell. Worthless and pointless. What are you?”

“Worthless and pointless, Ma’am,” Bond grunted.

She thudded the cane into his balls again: Bond wheezed gently and tried his hardest to retain his grip both on the chair and on the scruff of his orgasm, which was prowling around the corners of his brain, taunting him with potential and impossibility.

“Useless,” Eve said, gritting her teeth as she whacked him again, and again. “An obsolete tool. Rubbish. Waste. A nothing. A no one.”

Bond bowed his head and felt his body vibrate with the force of her strikes. She didn’t yet have M’s technique, the one that allowed for heavy impact with less effort, but Eve _did_ have a much stronger shoulder. He took down air in ponderous gulps, and felt himself begin to sink.

“No one loves you,” said Eve, battering him with all the might of the storming sea.

Bond grunted, gasped, drowned, and came.

“Wow,” said Eve, sounding far away and exhausted, and significantly pleased, “you’re _difficult_.”

“Mm,” said Bond, between breaths, and, “Thank you, Ma’am.”

She came before him, mopping her brow and grinning like the sun on the brightest of mornings. She unlocked the cuffs. “God, I feel like I’ve got wet rope for arms.”

“You’re beautiful,” said Bond, because she was, and it was the only thought he could adequately form into words.

She laughed at him. “I’m taking those earrings.”

“Oh?” Bond managed, massaging each of his hands in turn.

She laughed again. “I’m going to pawn them. I need to buy Marion a new costume. This one’s all sweaty.”

* * *

Home, alone, Bond nursed bruised testicles. On the lavatory cistern, the ugly china bulldog watched with an inscrutable porcelain expression.

“That’s all very well for you to say,” he told the silent figurine, dabbing Savlon onto the areas where she’d broken the thin skin of his balls. He paused, and picked up the dog. “She knew what she was doing when she left me you.”

Bond replaced the dog in his habitual spot.

“Keep an eye on things, Winston,” he told the china bulldog. “I have to take my retirement papers from Mallory.”

* * *

The ‘Christmas party’ was, in his estimation, the stupidest idea MI5 had chucked out in a while. He still hadn’t quite managed to retire. Eve was comfortable enough with him to lay wrist-grabbing claims on him in front of other people, which he found he minded a lot less now that it was clear that top brass, i.e. Mallory, couldn’t _yet_ do without him. And Q, gawky horror with a coiled beast inside him, seemed to have found a new receptacle for his weird affections, even if he wasn’t quite _aware_ that he had yet.

When the time came for yet another toast, he leaned over and murmured into Eve’s ear: “The Queen is dead: long live the Queen.”

She didn’t elbow him in the side as hard as she might have done, which Bond took as tacit approval of what was, quite possibly, slightly sentimental drivel. 

“Well done,” Tanner mumbled under his breath, passing with a bottle of the _good_ bubbly in hand, the stuff he definitely should have had at all.

* * *

This is the story of a man who had two great loves, who both died, and one great friend, who kept him from sinking. 


End file.
